Pictured: Fledgling by a bottle of Poison Girl, with dark purple flowers.
My love for Octavia Butler is deep and all consuming. I’m closing in on reading her entire oeuvre as soon as I nail down the Patternmaster series. She has stories about gene trading aliens, pregnant men, the destruction of America under a demagogic leader, among other thought experiments. She does with sci fi what should be done with sci fi: Explore social phenomenon and test the boundaries of human social expectations.

Fledgling (2005) is no different in this regard. It isn’t my favorite book of hers by any means (that award goes to Parable of the Talents), but it’s just so darn interesting that I’ve returned to it many times. The story follows a young vampire named Shori, who wakes in agonizing pain, nearly burned to death, and blinded, in a cave. As she heals and makes her way out into the world, she has to solve the murder of her family and try to navigate a society she has no memory of in order to get justice or her people.

Fledgling was supposed to be Butler’s “fun” vampire novel, and it was the book she wrote just before she died. (Too soon!) In spite of that, the novel continues to explore the concept of power in hierarchical societies, as well as biological interdependence through a completely original imagining of how vampires and their humans may interact. While some of this novel’s prose isn’t as polished as Butler’s other novels, the conceptual development is more than worth the read.Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Daniel Ryan Alarcon of The Mary Sue had an excellent piece about how the refocusing of Legends of Tomorrow’s second season around Sara Lance aka White Canary as its lead helped to vastly improve the show’s direction. I highly recommend it. It got me thinking about my favorite episodes so far of the show as far as Sara Lance was concerned. So here are my top five below.

Blossoms Bloom Brightest is a visual novel about three sapphics in space. They wake up from stasis, with two of the characters, the perky engineer Kotoha (basically an otaku who reminds me of a high school friend of mine) and the justifiably suspicious Sara (who is much more interesting imo, but comes with some serious baggage), as your potential love interests. You guide the actions of the captain, Erica, who mysteriously won’t tell her tiny crew what their mission is or why they’ve been chosen for it.

This is a cute, entertaining little game that takes about an hour to complete for one storyline. Thus, it’s pretty short, although considering the price, you could do worse. The concept behind the plotline is pretty standard sci fi and worth exploration. What the game lacks mostly is development; of plot, of characters, of romantic relationships, you get what you pay for. However, if you enjoy the game, Reine Works and Dharker Studios will be releasing a rebooted version with new artwork, another love interest, and longer gameplay September 15th under the title Galaxy Angels.

I wasn’t sure how to start this review. So I’m just going to say, I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.

I genuinely like Charlize Theron. I’m not a superfan to the point that I watch everything she comes out with, or treat her as my “exception” the way my straight friends do. But she is a bonus for any movie. Unfortunately, like another highly anticipated action movie that Charlize stars in, Aeon Flux, this film both falls short and doesn’t really do justice to the source material.

Atomic Blonde doesn’t fail because of its titular character, though. Problems like this tend to stem from writing, direction, and editing. Since the movie has been out for some time at the writing of this review, I’m just going to tag SPOILERS here, so I can break down the movie on a macro level.